Friday, May 30, 2014

The value of "mass".

Roseholme Cottage is in the South Broad Ripple (or "SoBro") neighborhood, east of Meridian and north of 52nd Street. The range at which I am a member, Marion County Fish & Game, is out west of Speedway, about even with 25th Street. Traveling south-by-southwest to get there takes one past or through some of the rougher neighborhoods in town. The running joke here is when the morning news announces somebody got shot last night, I'll ask aloud "At Thirty-whatth and What?"

Driving home from the range early yesterday afternoon, it was still a gorgeous day on the Near Northside, although ominous clouds had been closing in on the range from the west. I was eastbound on 38th when a cop car, closely followed by two more, went blazing westbound running code and not sparing the horses. A couple blocks later, as I was getting ready to turn left onto Fall Creek Parkway at the Fairgrounds, here came a fourth, headed in the same direction as the first three.

Now, I take second place to nobody in cracking wise on the driving habits of the IMPD, but these cars weren't moving like they were headed to last call, but with that reckless speed that gets reserved for certain radio calls...

Guess it takes an Uber-Rich Hollywood Spoiled Brat to make the MSM anymore. Similar problem up here in Cleveland last weekend. 4 people shot to death in 4 separate locations over 24 hours. The Police Chief came out for a Press Conference asking for Witnesses to come out, because the Police are Baffled.

Yeah, I know it's the Cleveland P.D., but still...

Guess it's going to be a Bad Summer. Time to get some Trigger Time in.

Kristophr, I used to live in that neighborhood in Indy, and I'm more than a little familiar with Lents in PDX. No contest. Lents loses the race to the bottom. You're talking a four generation head start in Indy.

When I worked at the Big Spaceship Factory (henceforth, the BSF) down in the LA basin, I could never figure out why some stuff made the news, and other stuff didn't. After discussions with one of my brothers, we decided that there was just so much of it, the media couldn't keep up, so they only covered stuff that promoted their agenda (or that they had especially good video footage of). Two episodes stick in my memory.

Episode one - I was riding the 400-4 home from the large workout facility owned by the BSF late one night after my V-ball team's practice. Hardly any traffic at all. Big four-lane surface street all the way home. On the bike, I always slowed at intersections and looked both ways. Most intersections in the flat bits out there have fairly substantial dips, sometimes as much as one to one and a half feet, on all four sides of the intersection for water run-off on the rare occasions when it rains. Four or five blocks from the facility, there was an intersection where the dips were especially prominent. I had a green light, but I slowed anyway, looked right, stopped, put both feet down, and waited. Nine (9) police cars came through that intersection at a high rate of speed, full blinkies, but no sirens. Every single one of them did the full "Dukes of Hazard". The car cleared the right side dip, hit the intersection rise with their front bumper, bounced the bottom rear of the car off the center of the rise, went partially airborne, then crashed into the dip rise on the far left side of the intersection, again smashing their front bumper, bottoming out the suspension all the way around, and finally smacking the bottom of the rear of the car on the rise out of the dip, before disappearing down the street at a high rate of speed. No sirens at all. I waited, looked right again, saw two more coming, watched them perform the same double crash, looked carefully both ways, then behind me, and only then did I slowly venture out and cross the intersection. Never saw anything on the 11 pm news that night.

Episode two - Riding the trusty 400-4 home from work at the Spy Satellite Factory (SSF - not the same place as the BSF) on the 91 freeway. Couple of exits from mine, A CHiPpie had the exit blocked with his cruiser. I had gotten over to the right, so I looked over the edge of the overpass, and was stunned by what I saw. Every square foot of concrete at an entire intersection, a goodly portion of all the streets leading to it, along with the entire parking lot of a 7-11 on one of the corners, was covered with police cars. I have never seen so many police cars in one spot in my entire life. I'm guessing there were somewhere between 40 and 60 police cars jammed in there, and they really were jammed in there. I figure it would have taken them a half hour just to get them all out again. I was moving, so I didn't have time to count. As I went by, I noticed that the on-ramp from that street was also blocked off up on the freeway by another CHiPpie cruiser.

Didn't make the 5, 5:30, 6, 6:30, or 11 o'clock news that evening. On any channel.

Never did find out what the problem was. Guessing there was an issue at the 7-11, but man - it must have been pretty bad to pull that kind of response in LA. Just glad I wasn't anywhere near it.